Category: Information about interconnection and peering

Whether you are a small hosting provider, an ISP, a content publisher, or a content application provider, at one point or another in your network’s growth cycle, you will ask yourself the question: When should I peer and when should I use transit? As soon as you have an ASN and are multihomed, you will think about peering.

An empirical study conducted by Adnan Ahmed, Zubair Shafiq, Harkeerat Bedi, and Amir Khakpour involved a large-scale measurement-based performance comparison of peering and transit interconnection strategies, quantifying the performance differences between transit and peering.

Peering paths outperform transit paths

In this white paper, we show some of the study’s results, including how:

• Peering paths outperform transit paths for 91% of Autonomous Systems (ASes);
• Peering paths have smaller propagation delays as compared to transit paths for more than 95% of ASes;
• Peering paths outperform transit paths in terms of propagation delay due to shorter path lengths.

Global Internet traffic volume has increased by more than 40% every year in recent years, and access ISPs are engaging increasingly in peering relationships instead of buying transit.

And while content publishers and Content Delivery Networks traditionally relied on buying transit to deliver their content to end users, today they are deciding more and more in favor of peering relationships with access ISPs (or eyeball networks) to reduce transit costs.

To learn more, download the white paper by filling in the form. 

Peering is a process in which two or more networks exchange traffic, and it can help you to make the most of your resources and expand your network for the benefit of your business.

Peering has many benefits for all sorts of organizations, from small hosting providers to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and content delivery networks, and on to enterprises.

Peering helps you to:

• raise more revenue,
• decrease the costs for your IP borders,
• lower the latency from your network to others,
• increase the throughput to other networks,
• improve your connection to major players like Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.

And much more! Download our white paper to learn why you should start peering now. 

Bernd Spiess, peering expert for many years, has developed 10 tips for peering; from optimizing routing data base entries to prefix aggregation.

1. Optimize your routing data base entry

Please make sure that you:

• have your routing data in just one routing database like RIPE, AFRINIC, RADB etc. (unless you are a global player)
• have all used prefixes covered by one correct database entry, matching the ASN which they come from (more-specifics need dedicated entries too)
• have all active (!) own and customer ASNs and AS-SETs listed in your main AS-SET – and remove unused ones

2. Use the route servers (2 sessions ipv4, 2 sessions ipv6)

The route servers help you to get the majority of possible sessions. It will help you to avoid extra work to configure all the newly-arriving members.

3. Verify your prefix amounts and details

Please verify via the route server looking glass whether the route server accepts all of your sent prefixes. If you see a difference, most probably you have not specified the right AS-SET during turn-up, or you have missing or wrong routing database entries.

If you want to know more, then download the guide by filling in the form.  

After your contract to join DE-CIX is signed, our customer support team takes care of installing the fiber patch from the DE-CIX peering access switch to your:

• Router/switch (if you have equipment on-site in one of our data centers)
• Backhaul carrier port (if you peer remotely and a carrier extends the link to you)
• Reseller-VLAN (if you ordered via a DE-CIX reseller; in this case there is no patch necessary)

The support team will lead you through all the necessary steps to get your port and services up and running. This includes a working and tested Layer 2 connection to the productive peering VLAN and delivers a Layer 3 IPv4 and IPv6 address to you.

Steps you’ll need to take

Once your access is up and running, there are some steps you will need to take. These include configuring your route server peering, verifying settings, setting up direct peering (direct BGP sessions), monitoring your traffic, etc.

To learn how to start peering at DE-CIX, download our guide by filling in the form.

Download our white paper to learn more about inbound and outbound routing, how a router decides which path is best, localpref, MED and AS-PATH rules, and best practices.

Here is a preview:

Basic information:

• You define where packets leave your network
• The other party defines which route is used to route the packets back to you
• In most cases, the Internet is not routed symmetrically

Routing outbound

Routing packets from your network to the other network are defined by you.

• Your router sends outgoing packets on the basis of its routing table
• The routing table is built up based on learned (=incoming) prefixes from neighbors
• Prefixes are typically learned from:

1. Transit sessions
2. Peering sessions (IXP or PNI)
3. Customer sessions

• If you have more than one router, your routers synchronize their learnings via IBGP

First, you have to learn a route from outside; then you can use it to send packets there.

• In an advanced network, your router sees the prefixes from the target network on different paths
• As there is more than one way of learning prefixes, you have to define where the outbound packet should be sent

Fill in the form to download the white paper!

Download the ebook

The Internet has brought the world together, but it was not designed to support the connectivity your business needs today. Put simply, you can no longer depend on it to deliver business-critical data and applications.

The good news is there’s an alternative. And that is what this ebook is all about: Optimizing and future-proofing your business network infrastructure.

Learn how interconnection can help you to:

• Manage limitless cloud-based applications
• Connect and securely exchange massive volumes of data with any number of partners or suppliers
• Ensure your business-critical traffic reaches its destination as fast as it should
• Position your business to survive and thrive

Download the ebook “Beyond the Internet: The era of custom connectivity” to learn all about the benefits of interconnection and to find out about the four steps to optimal connectivity.

To get your copy, please fill in the form.

How interconnection powers enterprise digital transformation

Enterprises must view digitalization not merely as a tool to enhance existing processes, but as a catalyst for driving innovation in their businesses.

At the core of the digital enterprise is a network infrastructure that enables the flexible usage of a variety of cloud and network services that accommodate the performance and security requirements that help you to grow your business.

In this ebook we talk about just that: The impact of digital transformation and the new era of enterprise connectivity.

Download the ebook to learn about:

• The cost of bad connectivity
• Benefits of private direct connections
• The advantages of connecting to an Internet & Cloud Exchange

To download the ebook, please fill in the form.

ASN is short for Autonomous System Number. It is a bit like the main phone number of a global company. It is a number which is globally unique and defines the path to the owner’s network, no matter whether it is a small network or a global player.

As a rule, one ASN is all you need for global operations – there is no need to own and operate multiple ASNs. Most of the big global networks operate a single-AS strategy.

ASNs and the BGB protocol

The ASN is used as a main parameter for what is known as the BGP protocol. The ASN is a key element of the process of BGP route advertisement. BGP takes care of advertising or receiving IPv4 or IPv6 networks, and the ASN information is used to help routers understand how to reach which route. The source ASN where an IP prefix is located is called the “originating ASN”.

Where and how to get an ASN

Download the white paper to learn more about

• who hands out ASNs
• what are RIRs and LIRs
• the three main advantages of having your own ASN

Find out about the disadvantages of single-homing and the advantages of multi-homing.

Enterprises see cloud adoption as a strategic imperative, but many organizations lack a strategy to make the most of this strategic platform. What is needed is a clearly defined cloud strategy.

An enterprise cloud strategy:

• Is fully aligned with business objectives
• Answers the “what” and “why” of cloud usage
• Provides a clear decision framework for any initiative
• Continually evolves with the business and tech innovations

Download the infographic to learn about the key elements a cloud strategy should have, and get started with creating one for your organization.

To download the infographic, fill in the form.